Partners

Standard Services

K2’s standard license management features can be used with all "off-the-shelf" application programs. Thus there is no requirement for any sort of technology integration and no requirement for a partnership relationship with software publishers. All programs installed throughout a site will be discovered by K2 and then be subject to K2’s flexible license control, usage monitoring, and auditing control – it is not necessary for software publishers to do anything special.

K2 is not limited to metering of "concurrent use" licenses. Unlike many software license management products, K2 can be configured to actively or passively manage virtually any software license policy. This includes the option to centrally manage single computer licenses by “node-locking” to designated computers.

Some publishers, however, have explicitly partnered with Sassafras in order to offer augmented licensing options or management options specifically for K2 managed sites.

Special Services

Software publishers can easily augment their own, built-in, anti-piracy technology so that it will defer to K2/KeyServer when their software is running under KeyServer control. Software publishers may also offer special software licensing rights when a customer is using a specific K2/KeyServer feature such as: anti-piracy security, node-locked license allocation, concurrent license limit enforcement, user authenticated access, quarterly management reports, etc.

Several publishers bundle a dedicated KeyServer with their product in order to specify and manage licensing rights with a digitally signed “license certificate”. At a site that is already managing other software licensing with K2/KeyServer, a publisher-supplied license certificate can be imported so that their single KeyServer will continue to provide a unified interface for all software license management.

K2 manages license control, utilization statistics, and deployment profiles for all application programs. A complete and unified management view is maintained for all programs stored on portable, desktop, file server, or thin client servers. A technology partnership is only required when a publisher wants to take advantage of additional custom services.

We encourage software publishers and software asset managers to work together with us in perfecting license management technologies and policies that work to the benefit of all parties. Please contact Sassafras and/or the software publisher for details and to further this collaboration. Some of our partners in this effort are listed below.